Grocio's dashboard

Grocio replied on October 13, 2009 15:15 to the idea "Ping.fm integration in Tweetie 2 for iPhone" in atebits:

Happy Tweetie 1 iPhone app buyer. Would be a much more happier Tweetie 2 owner... but you've not put the Ping.fm nummies in there.

So, I'll ask nicely, "Please add Ping.fm support to Tweetie2 update." Then I'll buy it PDQ.

Grocio started following the idea "Ping.fm integration in Tweetie 2 for iPhone" in atebits.

Grocio replied on September 13, 2009 19:39 to the problem "I just want olive oil...regular olive oil." in Grocio:

One can never have too much olive oil Roberto! :) A little cracked pepper and a splash of olive oil on fresh baked bread...

Grocio replied on September 05, 2009 21:51 to the question "Additional browser support (non Internet Explorer) and Mobile Versions" in Grocio:

Hey Carl, great questions. Actually I test everything in Safari and Firefox (as I'm a Mac guy and therefore don't have IE).

Also, the site WILL BE tuned for mobile devices although it's not reflecting that at the moment.

Grocio replied on August 13, 2009 09:32 to the problem "I just want olive oil...regular olive oil." in Grocio:

The problem with produce is it uses a proprietary UPC. So, unlike "Bellino Extra Virgin Olive Oil" which will have the same UPC from store to store... Ears of corn and Seedless green grapes will have different UPCs from store to store (sometimes even within the same grocery chain).

As for searching on "olive oil"... as you can imagine there are hundreds of brand size possibilities. Even narrowing it down by adding "extra virgin" to the search returns too many (it's kind of like looking at the aisle full of olive oil at the store... how to make a decision!).

It's been clear for a while we need to do a better job of making it easier to pick your product. Not sure what that will look or feel like yet. But, we're working on it.

Grocio replied on August 13, 2009 09:26 to the question "Bulk prices?" in Grocio:

Julie - You have such good questions! (Thanks by the way)

If a store has a UPC for the item, we'll have it. We may not have it in our database right now... But, if THEY can scan it, we'll have it.

Grocio replied on August 13, 2009 09:24 to the problem "Missing Brands" in Grocio:

It's not a problem now.

Simply type in "French's mustard" or "Mission tortilla" and you'll have your pick of the lot.

Grocio replied on August 11, 2009 11:48 to the question "Didn't get invite for Beta test" in Grocio:

My apologies. Makes me wonder if the email address we have for you bounced or was undeliverable for some reason?

http://beta.grocio.com/ is where our beta will reside. Please, limit your comparison shopping to:

* The 74114 zip code and surrounding area
* Grocery items (we've not yet loaded the cleaning and personal care items)

We're looking forward to your feedback.

Gerald

Grocio replied on August 07, 2009 11:45 to the idea "Generic items on shopping list, forced to choose brands" in Grocio:

paa101 - There are free text search challenges and then there are just plain 'equivalents' challenges. Free text is actually pretty easy. It's the presentation of 100's of possible results and making those easy to sift through that we're dealing with right now. "Bread" matches loafs of bread (and bread crumbs and bread dough and bread flour and on and on). It needs to be dead simple to pick the intent. Someone mentioned sorting by popularity which isn't a bad idea.

As for equivalents, you have a situation like BRAND=Oreo but maybe from the shopper's point of view her is PRIORITY=Price. So, when a store's private label doesn't contain the word "Oreo" but they have a Hydrox equivalent... I suspect a lot of consumers who are more price driven than brand driven would want to see the private label cookie as an option too.

We have some known challenges ahead. Some big and some small. We'll solve some of them well. And, we'll have our share of belly flops. No matter what we're going to listen to our shoppers and keep refactoring our applications. When we get it wrong... It's forums like this one, and Twitter and Facebook... where we have our ears turned on.

Grocio replied on August 07, 2009 11:31 to the idea "If you are going to include information make sure it is complete and accurate." in Grocio:

Megan, Thanks for the catch. We're only as good as the data source and for some reason ALDI is presenting an impossible telephone number. Before we launch we *WILL* be making allowances for store personnel to submit corrections (hours, address, phone number, manager name, that sort of thing).

Grocio replied on August 06, 2009 12:30 to the idea "Which ZIP Codes work in the BETA?" in Grocio:

moonliter - It was fixed a few days ago. Not sure how I missed your message and I'm sorry for that.

Hope you'll help test a bit more as we keep making improvements/fixes to the system

Grocio replied on August 06, 2009 12:27 to the idea "Go ahead... Shop for a BRAND" in Grocio:

Short story made long...

Grocio has licensed the names of the GROCERY roducts + their UPCs (for a big chunk of change) from a third party. There are some options we could have added.... images, nutritional information, plus many others. And, we probably will over time. There are several databases to pick from - health care/personal, cleaning products, plus many others.

I opted to start out with ONLY the names, descriptions and UPCs of the grocery database for the purposes of the beta. To do much more than that would have meant spending money sooner than necessary and frankly not have resulted in THAT much better of a product for testing.

Lots of reasons to license the data... I'll not go into that here because it's advantageous to Grocio to keep some things proprietary. No sense helping would-be competitors.

paa101, hope that answers the question head on and explains some of the background. I know it was a bit long... there are entrepreneurs and students reading the answers and I'm trying to keep them in mind as I post answers.

Grocio replied on August 06, 2009 12:16 to the idea "Generic items on shopping list, forced to choose brands" in Grocio:

Fair enough. And, THANKS for the insight into your shopping behavior.

Do you feel a "best price possible" option would work in cases where brand is less important than price? Is there maybe a better option?

Grocio replied on August 05, 2009 19:01 to the idea "Show a map of stores" in Grocio:

I follow you now. We do have tectonic shifts as grocers and their banners go.

Noted and agreed. You are hereby put in charge of fixing it! :) And, from what I gather, you could do it nicely.

Grocio replied on August 05, 2009 00:28 to the problem "got milk?" in Grocio:

Would LOVE to see the picker you worked on. Inspiration very welcome :) 918-813-9745

Grocio replied on August 05, 2009 00:27 to the idea "Generic items on shopping list, forced to choose brands" in Grocio:

Picking a brand is necessary at some point... otherwise how can we pull a price out of the hat?

In the video of the prototype there's a "best price possible" option. That's not yet in the beta.

Grocio replied on August 05, 2009 00:24 to the idea "Show a map of stores" in Grocio:

The map idea actually has been worked on. But, isn't ready for the beta.

As for not knowing the names of the stores you like... You may be unique in the universe Joseph. I could be wrong... But I think most people know where they're shopping. ;)

Who said we're about choosing the lesser of two evils!? Let me at 'em!

Grocio replied on August 04, 2009 20:20 to the problem "Couldn't find anything on the list" in Grocio:

Right now we return 50 "hits" from the db. There are certainly more there!

I've licensed a db of 140,000 products. Almost all are FOOD. items. So you won't see Huggies or Pampers or shampoo (yet). We'll get the UI for product selection figured out. Meanwhile, we're really appreciating the feedback.

Grocio replied on August 04, 2009 20:15 to the problem "Duplicate stores" in Grocio:

Great point Joseph. There's a fair bit of data cleansing needed ahead of any real go live event. And, you'll SE a LOT of this clearing up over time.

Thanks for the Eagle Eye!

Gerald

Grocio shared an idea in Grocio on August 04, 2009 16:10:

Go ahead... Shop for a BRAND

Shopping lists with brand names now work as expected. So "Bairds", "Bordens" or "Log Cabin" now behave as would be expected.